Poverty tourism used to be a metaphorical term. Now it's literal too. Great.
When Slumdog Millionaire was released it made it very clear who was radical in their politics and who was a lib. The messaging in the movie is downright disgusting.
Horatio Alger and his consequences has been a disaster for political discourse.
Thinking back on it I can’t even concretely say what the messaging was. Organized crime bad? Love good? Maybe some vague allusion to tech being the future of India. Whole thing was a fancy package on not much substance, probably why it disappeared from the popular consciousness rather fast.
So I had a discussion about an old game with someone here on Hexbear. They had a completely different take on one of the main characters than I did and, ultimately, it was a reflection on how I had first played the game prior to radicalising while they clearly first played the game post-radicalisation and it showed.
I think we're going to have one of these moments right now.
The message of Slumdog Millionaire is this:
The people who live in slums are cruel, selfish, vicious, and essentially they deserve their lot in life. But if there is a virtuous slum-dweller then fate will intervene and ultimately they will be rewarded with the station in life that they truly deserve.
I can see that argument, if one looks at the characters as representing the Indian underclasses as a whole. Which is probably an underling problem with any “rags to riches” story: if they wander into riches by chance, it’s not entertaining, so they have to have some sort of virtue that sets them apart from their peers that gets them the riches.
Interestingly, there was a scene that ended up on the cutting room floor that would have completely flips the script on that. He’d still get the girl, but the show’s producers would have dumped him on the street and told him he wasn’t getting a single rupee. Then it would’ve been, even if the underclasses play by the rules and beat the system’s game, the game still leaves them impoverished. Wonder if that was the director’s decision to drop that scene, or if it was the studio’s.
Eh. There's absolutely zero reason why they couldn't have had sympathetic underclass characters in the story even if they were morally grey or flawed characters somehow.
Look at the orphanage scene and the narrative it creates around disabled beggar children, for goodness sake.
I don't think that the story in the film would have been somehow diminished if there were other slum-dwellers who were virtuous. Shit, the protagonist could have even paid back those other virtuous characters by helping them out after his win and it would have contributed to the moral justification for his character being in a rags to riches situation. But no.
if one looks at the characters as representing the Indian underclasses as a whole.
I mean, wasn't the movie representing basically every Indian underclass and every trope about the Indian underclasses throughout the story though?
If we transposed this argument to a film that represented queer people or people living in the projects in the same sort of way, for example, I'm not convinced that you'd be arguing against the fact that it's acceptable to have essentially no virtuous characters who were queer or from the projects.
I get what you’re saying, it’s problematic that there’s not more virtuous underclass characters in the film. The higher classes aren’t presented any better, though, constant exploitation of anyone lower on the rung than them. Like, the timing of the movie felt very opportune, right when Western audiences were starting to catch wind of Indian cinema, which gives the whole thing a “look, the third world is finally learning modernity” vibe.
metaphorical term
I think it always had a literal meaning, but this is just a very extreme example
I remember a lot of buzz around Slumdog Millionaire but don't know the details. Can you tell me more?
Paper Airplanes was a banger before M.I.A. lost her shit. That's about all I remember
So a slum dweller goes through life and struggles against all sorts of personal challenges, generally caused by other slum-dwellers and "bad" types like mafia gangs.
But along the way there are crucial details that he encounters in these major events in his life and these details provide him with the answers he needs to be able to win Who Wants To Be A Millionaire.
The movie is told in an episodic way retrospectively.
Of course the protagonist in the story is a small-time hero and he is virtuous in how he goes about his life, as opposed to virtually every other slum-dwellers and "bad" member of society.
I've already put this in a different comment but the thrust of the story is that virtuous people will be rewarded by fate and that slum-dwellers (i.e. everyone in the slums besides the protagonist) deserves to be there because they are "savages".
